The Benefit of Waiting

“But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”  Isaiah 40:13

If there is anything that people don’t like to do, it is to wait, especially on other people.  We are so used to instant everything, that we feel annoyed, sometimes anxious when we have to wait.  I am reminded of an episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” when Ray and his wife Debra argued about him always having to wait on her to get ready to go out resulting in their late arrival to most functions.  There was a banquet in a few days, and Debra promised that she would be ready to leave by six p.m.  The time to depart arrived, and Debra still had not come downstairs.  Her curling iron had become entangled in her hair and wouldn’t let loose.  Ray, waiting in the car, irritated and annoyed, left without her precisely at six p.m.

When he arrived at the banquet, he bragged to his friends how he had drove off without her.  One of the men said, “My wife would kill me if I did that.”  All of a sudden, fear and remorse came over Ray as he began to consider the trouble he was in.  It seems like it would have been a good idea for Debra to alert Ray’s brother Robert, who was babysitting for them, to go tell Ray what happened before he left.  But I suppose that would not fit in with the plot to show the results of being impatient.

Waiting has become something that we expect, although it seems that folks are growing more impatient by the day.  I read that people get irritated if they have to wait more than two seconds for a website to appear on their computer screen.  Why do most folks feel that they don’t deserve to wait, even for a few seconds?  Where did we get the idea that everything is supposed to happen instantaneously?  I guess it is part of the whole “entitlement mentality” thing.  We want it, and we want it now.  If “socialized medicine” ever becomes the rule for our health care, plan on waiting a long time for an appointment if you can get one.

Isaiah gives us some definite benefits of waiting on the LORD: strength, optimism, energy, hope, and good results.  Unfortunately many of us don’t want to wait but rather head out on our own only to end up worse off that we were.  If we will just give waiting on the LORD a try, perhaps we won’t end up like Ray, and instead receive the answer from God that will strengthen and renew our faith.